


Regarding appropriate breakfast conversation topics

by renquise



Series: Life is pretty mundane, even for elite mercenary teams. [5]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Gen, robot hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-03
Updated: 2010-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day Scout woke up in the morning and walked into the mess and Engineer had a robot hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regarding appropriate breakfast conversation topics

One day Scout woke up in the morning and walked into the mess and Engineer had a robot hand.

Scout yawned. Stuck his hand down his boxers and scratched a bit. Huh.

“What’s for breakfast?”

“French toast and bacon. Didn’t have the time nor the inclination for full-on biscuits this mornin’,” Engineer said. His robot hand clacked against the mug as he took a swig of coffee. As much as you could take a swig of something that looked like freakin’ tar in a mug.

“Huh.”

“Looks like a fine day out there today. Sun’s shinin’, birds singin’—well, there were,‘till Spy shot the one outside his window—and it’s nice and hot,” Engineer said, flipping a piece of toast over with a flick of his robot wrist.

“Huh.”

“Y’want some coffee while it’s cookin’, boy?” Engineer threw over his shoulder as he picked up the coffee pot, his robot fingers wrapping around the handle with a series of quiet clicks.

Scout meant to say ‘Heck no, that stuff you make is freakin’ toxic,’ but what came out instead was, “What the fuck, you have a robot hand.”

Engineer blinked, and looked at the coffee pot in his hand. “That I do.”

_Robot hand._

_What the fuck._

Engineer must have noticed Scout staring or something, because he chuckled and rotated his wrist around a bit, smiling modestly. “Aw, I’ve had it for a bit, now. It was just a matter of ironing out the kinks ‘fore I brought it into battle proper, is all.”

Engineer checked over his shoulder to make sure breakfast wasn’t burning, and then did something complicated and twisty with the cuff to make the hand come off with a pop and aw, gross.

“See, it just fits onto the forearm, easy as anything. Don’t make that kind of face, son, it’s just an arm. Or, well, part of one.” Engineer reached towards the pan on the stove, chuckled, and then reached for it again with the arm that currently had a hand attached to it.

But seriously, that was just plain gross, and this was coming from, well, _him_. His brothers had made sure to beat any squeamishness out of him pretty early on. Bugs? Haha, are you kidding? They had been great for bugging girls at recess when he was in grade school. Roadkill? Pff, whatever—the racoons on their side of town were big enough to survive pretty much anything. If anything, the car usually came out of it looking worse than the racoon. That thing under the bed that Pat had kept for ages until Ma kept sayin’ that his room smelled really funky? Whatever, he’d even eaten a bite of it as a dare.

Heck, severed body parts weren’t that weird, either. Randy was missing a few fingers from that one thing with the dog and the ice cream truck, and Scout himself had once beat the BLU Heavy into a fine pulp with his own arm (which, okay, had already been removed by Soldier, but it still counted). Point is, he’s used to gross things.

And Truckie’s creepy hand-stump was still pretty freakin’ weird.

But then there was the whole robot hand thing. There was a little part of him that was saying that having a robot hand was _awesome_. Not that he wanted one or anything. He was fine with his arms and legs right where they were. Even if he kind of wanted to know if Truckie could make, like, _robo-legs_. With rockets. And a chainsaw or something.

Scout slumped at the table and kicked at the chair legs a bit. It was way too early to be dealing with Engie’s freakin’ morning-person cheer and robot hand. “So what the heck is that thing.”

“Well, y’see, this beauty’s similar to BLU’s, which you’ve surely run into a couple times by now. Reverse-engineered it myself—didn’t even need to get Spy to steal the blueprints. But it’s been improved upon, of course. A few extra additions and refinements.” Engineer patted his hand fondly. “BLU doesn’t stand a chance against Sue-Ann here.”

“Okay, namin’ your hand is kinda getting into weird territory—“ Scout opened his mouth, and then closed it. “Wait, back up. So you’re sayin’ that you lopped off your freakin’ hand because the BLU Engineer did?”

“’Course not! You wouldn’t jump off a bridge just because someone else did, would you, boy?” (Pff, Scout totally wouldn’t. Well. It depended on the bridge.) Engineer scratched at his morning stubble. With his stump. “But if your enemy’s got some technology that you don’t, well, you’ve got to keep up with things one way or another.”

Scout turned that over in his mind for a bit. “So you cut off your hand.”

“Well, yes, but you’re really reducin’ a rational, involved decision-making process to a single action.”

Scout looked at him again. “You cut off your freakin’ _hand_.”

Engineer considered that, and shrugged. “All in the name of science. Well, that, and I had a weekend to kill.”

“Some people go fishin’ or somethin’, you know. Get a canoe, throw dynamite in the water—I dunno, ask Sniper, he knows about that kind of stuff.”

“Never was much of a fisherman, m’self.”

“Well, okay, it’s boring as hell, so I guess that makes sense.” Granted, Scout had never really been fishing or camping or whatever, but he could guess that it’d be pretty dull. The only time Scout had ever been camping was when they’d convinced Ma to let them rig up a tent in the building’s courtyard when he was eight or so, and it hadn’t lasted long, what with Mike telling horror stories and everybody in the tent freaking out when Pat tripped on a tent peg outside and brought the whole freakin’ thing down with him. But fishing still sounded like a better time than hacking off your arm.

“So did it bleed a whole lot? Didja have to hack through the bone?” See, now he had to ask, because any one of his brothers would have treated him to all the details.

“Aw, it wasn’t too bad. Ol’ sawbones helped out with that part—he was darn pleased to have a use for his bonesaw outside of the battlefield,” Engineer said. Ha, Scout knew Doc had something to do with it.

The bacon snapped in the pan, and Engineer reattached his hand—man, he’s never had to use that sentence before—with a neat twist.

“I woulda added more lasers,” Scout said, after a bit.

“See, that’s the beauty of the thing! If I need more lasers, it’s a simple matter of addin’ em on. Don’t even need to lop off another limb unless I want to,” Engineer said, cheerfully.

The weird thing about hanging out with the team for a bit was that you couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

Scout vaguely registered Demo dropping into the chair across the table, looking pretty darn peppy for a guy who had been up serenading the BLUs with drunken bagpipes at 3 AM until Spy had thrown a shoe at him from his window. (Scout was pretty sure Demo was keeping the shoe hostage until Spy got him a good bottle of scotch, or something. Well, that was what Scout would do, at least. Either that or throw it back at him.)

Engineer gave Demo a wave and turned back to the stove. Demo looked at Engineer, squinted at the inside of his bottle of scrumpy, and looked at Engineer again, then shrugged in a way that seemed to say, “Huh, Engineer has a robot hand. Must be Monday.” Or however you said that in Scottish.

Having probably satisfied himself that Engineer’s robot arm was not an early-morning drunken hallucination, Demo said, “That’s new.”

“A-yup.”

“What’s ‘e yatterin’ on about?” Demo said, nodding towards Scout.

“Naw, don’t mind him, he’s just bein’ a little squeamish about a little ol’ arm stump.”

Demo snorted. “Och, lad, at least you don’t need to look at me eye socket every mornin’. Gruesome thing, it is. All full o’ crawly beasties and worms.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” Scout rolled his eyes.

“’Ey,” Demo called towards Engineer, “Since ye’re in the body part replacement business now, you ought to make me up some kind o’ eye. Something wi’ those newfangled lasers.”

“Told you,” Scout added through a mouthful of French toast.

Engineer looked intrigued. “I doubt I could reconnect any optical nerves, but if you’re talkin’ some kind of eye socket apparatus that just happens to fire a beam that slices unfortunate bystanders in half—well, I might be able to swing that.”

“Good lad,” Demo said, raising his bottle in a toast. “We cannae let you go and become the only cyborg on the team, after all.”

Great, at this rate, Scout was going to be the only non-creepy robot guy around here. “So do you—take it off at night, or what? Stick it in a glass by your dentures?”

“Yup. It don’t crawl around on its own during the night, as far as I can reckon, so there ain’t no sense in keepin’ it on,” Engineer said. One of his fingers slid out with one of those “ker-jeeeeeeek” noises that Scout never really thought existed outside of space movies and separated itself into pliers that grabbed a spatula and flipped the bacon and toast onto a plate.

Huh.

“Fair warnin’, if I hear your hand crawlin’ about in the vents like some unholy spider from the darkest pits, I will consider it well within my duty to send it back to its maker in wee, tiny pieces,” Demo mused.

“What about—do you take it off to—you know.” Scout gestured.

Engineer passed him the plate, and Scout took the chance to stuff food in his mouth as fast as possible. It was kinda impressive that you could tell that Engineer was raising an eyebrow, even with his goggles on, but hey, Scout was used to ignoring that kind of stuff. Barrelling on was always the better option. Plus, Demo was taking a swig of his scrumpy and trying to pretend that he wasn’t looking over at Engineer curiously, so ha, he wasn’t the only one who wanted to know.

“’Cuz chicks ask about that kinda stuff. ‘Less you go out with weird science chicks that have, like, machinegun boobs,” Scout continued, “But seriously, wouldn’t it be kinda awkward, all, hey, don’t mind me, go ahead and get naked, I just have to take off my swiss army robot hand. Unless you do some kind of weirdo strip tease, like, dun nah nah, bow chicka wow, takin’ off my clothes, aww yeah, dun nah nah, clunk, takin’ off my robot arm, whoowee.” Scout took another bite of bacon and chewed. “Or maybe weird science chicks are into that.”

“I don’t have the slightest inkling what you’re implyin’ about my social life, boy,” Engineer said mildly, “An’ swallow before you talk. I’m sure your ma’s a fine lady, and she wouldn’t want you actin’ like you were raised in a barn.” He sat down with his own plate and a fork, and flipped out a knife from another one of his fingers, cutting into his toast and humming cheerfully.

Scout opened his mouth to say that Engie knew exactly what he was talking about and oh my god, forget the science chicks, he probably had a robot chick in his workshop—and then, going against all of his instincts, closed it again.

If family dinners had taught Scout one thing, it was that sometimes it was just better to shut up and eat your food.

Especially if the cook had a robot hand.


End file.
